band

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.

Copyright The Columbia University Press

band, in music, a group of musicians playing principally on wind and percussion instruments, usually outdoors. Prior to the 18th cent., the term band was frequently applied in a generic sense to cover the combinations of instruments employed by kings and nobles. The term is also used for an ensemble of any one type of instrument, as brass band, wind band, marimba band. As town bands once provided music for social dancing, so do modern jazz and rock bands of numerous descriptions (see jazz, rock music).

Groupings of loud instruments characterized Saracen military bands participating in the Crusades. About 1300, similar groups, often including the shawm (a type of oboe), trumpet, and drum, appeared in the courts and towns of Europe. Town bands were manned by members of the watch and were integral to both the civic and social life of the community. These musicians participated in processions, dances, weddings, and feasts and provided incidental music for dramatic representations. During the 16th cent. the practice of playing instruments of the same family in consort (as in a shawm band) became popular, and new families of wind instruments added variety.

Evolution of Military and Concert Bands

As the town band began to decline at the end of the 17th cent., its official duties gradually shifted to the military band. A vestige of the extravagant, almost ritualistic affectations of the instrumentalists has survived in the routines of present-day drum majors and majorettes. For several centuries the general composition of the military band remained static, the fife and drum being associated with the infantry and the trumpet and kettledrum with the cavalry. France introduced the oboe in the latter half of the 17th cent., and a gradual merger with the full wind contingent of the town band ensued.

Important developments in instrument-making affected the composition of bands in the 19th cent. A Prussian bandmaster, Wilhelm Wieprecht (1802–72), introduced (c.1830) valve trumpets and horns into the military band. The saxhorns and saxophones of Adolphe Sax were incorporated into French military bands at midcentury. The sarrusophone was added in the 1860s, thus completing the instrumental ensemble that in most respects is known today.

Two outstanding European bands are the British Royal Artillery Band (founded 1762) and the band of the French Garde Républicaine, playing under that name since 1872. The U.S. Marine Band, founded in 1798, was the first important band in the United States and remains outstanding. The first U.S. band devoted exclusively to the presentation of public concerts was that of P. S. Gilmore, founded in 1859. His successor as America's leading bandmaster was John Philip Sousa (1854–1932). In 1911, Edwin Franko Goldman organized the Goldman Band, which continues to give outdoor concerts in New York City in the summer.

Bibliography

See R. F. Goldman, The Band's Music (1938) and The Concert Band (1946).

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band

band1
/ band/
•
n.
1.
a flat, thin strip or loop of material put around something, typically to hold it together or to decorate it:
wads of banknotes fastened with gummed paper bands. ∎
a strip of material forming part of a garment:
hatbandwaistband. ∎
a plain ring for the finger, esp. a gold wedding ring:
a narrow band of gold was her only jewelry. ∎ Ornithol.
a ring of metal placed around a bird's leg to identify it.
2.
a stripe or elongated area of a different color, texture, or composition than its surroundings:
a long, narrow band of cloud.3.
a range of frequencies or wavelengths in a spectrum (esp. of radio frequencies):
channels in the UHF band.•
v. [tr.] (usu. be banded)
1.
surround (an object) with something in the form of a strip or ring, typically for reinforcement or decoration:
doors are banded with iron to make them stronger. ∎ Ornithol.
put a band on (a bird) for identification.
2.
mark (something) with a stripe or stripes of a different color:
the bird's bill is banded across the middle with black |
[as adj.] (banded)
banded agate.band2 •
n.
1.
a group of people who have a common interest or purpose:
guerrilla bandsa determined band of activists. ∎ Anthropol.
a subgroup of a tribe.
2.
a group of musicians who play together, in particular: ∎
a small group of musicians and vocalists who play pop, jazz, or rock music:
the band's last two albumsa rock band. ∎
a group of musicians who play brass, wind, or percussion instruments:
a military band. ∎ inf.
an orchestra.
3.
a herd or flock:
moving bands of caribou.•
v. [intr.]
(of people or organizations) form a group for a mutual purpose:
local people banded together to fight the company.

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band

band.1. Flat raised horizontal strip on a façade, occasionally ornamented, sometimes coinciding with cills or floor-levels, also called a band-course, band-moulding, belt-course, or string-course. The term can therefore be applied to the fasciae on an architrave, and sometimes (though rarely) to a fillet, list, or taenia. In Classical Ordersdentils and modillions project from such bands called dentil-or modillion-bands.

2. Plain block interrupting an architectural element, such as a column. In this sense, banded is used to describe the condition. Examples are banded architrave (one with projecting blocks placed at regular intervals between which the architrave is visible, as in a Gibbs surround); banded, blocked, ringed, or rusticated column (with shaft interrupted by plain or rusticated square or cylindrical blocks, although some authorities prefer to use banded to mean a column-shaft made up of alternating larger and smaller drums, and blocked to indicate square blocks alternating with circular shaft-drums); banded pilaster (pilaster-shaft interrupted by rectangular blocks at intervals, corresponding to banded columns); and banded rustication (smooth ashlar alternating with rusticated bands or blocks projecting beyond the naked of the wall).

3.Bond, in Scots, hence inband (header) and outband (stretcher or quoin with long side on face and short on reveals).

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band

band Instrumental ensemble, usually consisting of wind and percussion instruments. A big band performs swing music and has about 16 musicians in four sections: trumpets, trombones, saxophones and a rhythm section. A brass band contains only brass and percussion instruments. A dance band has a rhythm section to provide the strict beat and melody instruments such as saxophone and violin to play the tunes. A jazz band varies according to the style of jazz: a traditional jazz band usually has a clarinet, trumpet, trombone and a rhythm section; a modern jazz quartet may feature saxophone, piano, drums and bass. A military (marching) band contains brass and woodwind instruments with percussion. A rock band has a core of electric guitar, bass guitar and drums to which singers and other instruments may be added.

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band

band A vertical stripe on a polytene chromosome that results from the specific association of a large number of chromomeres. The most commonly examined polytene chromosomes are in the salivary gland nuclei of insects, and recent studies of Drosophila suggest that each band contains the genetic material of a single gene. However, the significance of the bands in human and other chromosomes is not known.

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Band

Dictionary of Collective Nouns and Group Terms
COPYRIGHT 1985 Gale

Band

a company of persons or, sometimes, animals; a company of musicians. See also company, party, troop.

Examples: band of camels, 1611; of fold, 1490; of followers; of fugitives, 1876; of gorillas [a male with one or more females and young]; of men; of music, 1660; of musicians; of outlaws; of pilgrims [hymn]; of plovers; of robbers, 1826; of strangers, 1601; of violins.

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band

2. A section of the frequency spectrum lying between limits that are defined according to some requirement or to some functional aspect of a given signal or transmission channel. When used as a suffix the word is a contraction of bandwidth, as in narrowband, wideband.

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